Reshaping the Ecosystem for Industry 4.0 & Industry Next

• Identify: As a methodology, strategic foresight flows from the identification of signals to clustering the signals together to form trends and uncovering what is driving the trends to determine which strategic initiatives are most likely to lead to success on an industry level.
• Prioritize: Further customize the scores to your manufacturing by tailoring the generalized weightings on an organization-specific level and determining the relevancy and timing to your operations. By doing so, your manufacturing can determine which trend and technology to prioritize for your Reshaping-the-Ecosystem initiative.
• Align: After establishing what trend and technology to prioritize, establish its benefits that closely align and promote the success of your business goals.

Factory of the Future – Smart Factory Trends for Durable Goods

• Identify: As a methodology, strategic foresight flows from the identification of signals to clustering the signals together to form trends, and uncovering what is driving the trends to determine which strategic initiatives are most likely to lead to success on an industry level.
• Prioritize: Further customize the scores to your manufacturing by tailoring the generalized weightings on an organization-specific level and determining the relevancy and timing to your operations. By doing so, your manufacturing can determine which trend and technology to prioritize for your Smart Factory initiative.
• Align: After establishing what trend and technology to prioritize, establish its benefits that closely align and promote the success of your business’ goals.

Durable Goods Manufacturing IT/OT Convergence Report

• IT/OT convergence will bring new levels of connectivity to the manufacturing shop floor, creating great opportunities for remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and vendor support.
• Yet obstacles exist for Durable Goods Manufacturing CIOs, who are often not seen as innovators by operations staff. Learn how to overcome this issue and set the course for IT/OT convergence in your Durable Goods Manufacturing company.

Generative AI Use Case Library for the Durable Goods Manufacturing Industry

Info-Tech’s use case library provides practical guidance to help manufacturers accelerate value-driven Gen AI use case adoption.

Durable Goods Manufacturing Attracting and Retaining Talent Report

• Organizations are trying to become more agile and introduce new technology, but in many cases there is a need to retrain personnel or attract a different type of talent that is often hard to find.
• Learn about attracting and retaining talent and how it affects both your organization as a whole and IT specifically, including challenges and opportunities.

Durable Goods Manufacturing Industry 4.0 Report

• Industry 4.0 technology is lowering the entry bar and creating competition in many markets, forcing manufacturers to become more efficient to remain viable. As a leader in Durable Goods Manufacturing IT, your time to become a partner is now.
• Learn about the Industry 4.0 trend and how it affects both your organization and IT specifically, with expert assistance.

Integrate Artificial Intelligence Into Your Manufacturing Operations

• Identify the initiatives you are currently capable of undertaking. The lifeblood of AI is good data. See how you can use your current data before you get overwhelmed with the possibilities AI offers.
• Build the business case for AI around what is possible for your organization. Decide what you should be doing with AI based on what you are currently capable of doing.
• Assess your current skills and identify where you will need help from vendors. Knowing when to look outside of your organization for help will be critical to your AI success.
• Gain the support of the business by showing the quick wins your AI initiative will provide and the business pains it will help to solve. Provide regular communication on the progress of your AI initiative to ensure continued support from the organization.

Preparing for Technology Convergence in Manufacturing

• Build and deliver an IT update that focuses on what is most important.
• Achieve the buy-in you require while driving business value.
• Gain clarity on your scope, goals, and outcomes.
• Validate IT’s role as a strategic business partner.
• Tear down silos by identifying the strengths, weaknesses, and potential synergies between the IT and OT teams.
• Gain clarity on the current state and target state of IT/OT convergence maturity within the organization.
• Build effectiveness by defining roles and accountabilities within the IT and OT teams.
• Identify risks and benefits related to IT/OT convergence, guaranteeing the right balance.
• Ensure success by building a convergence plan with detailed initiative profiles.
• Prepare for plan approval, while developing clear communication and plan refreshes as needed.

Benchmarking Report: A Cross-Industry Comparison of IT Stakeholder Satisfaction

• Every industry has unique characteristics that can hamper progress or facilitate success in satisfying IT stakeholders. Reimagine your strategy by shifting the definition of who your peers really are.
• Discover which industries achieve high stakeholder satisfaction across 13 core IT services.
• Learn the characteristics that different industries have that can help or hinder IT success.
• Understand what your industry has in common with others that you can leverage to improve stakeholder satisfaction and overcome your own institutional barriers.

Durable Goods Manufacturing IT Stakeholder Satisfaction Benchmarking Report

• IT leadership needs to understand where their clients are unsatisfied with the quality of service they are receiving from IT.
• IT and OT departments need to develop closer governance models and share knowledge to leverage the benefits of many of the new technologies emerging in the sector.
• Understand important focus areas to address and insights into how your team compares with other Durable Goods Manufacturing IT organizations.

Durable Goods Manufacturing IT Staffing Benchmarking Report

• Many IT departments are already running lean, struggling to keep pace with never-ending demands from the business. IT staffing is stretched thin.
• By taking the IT Staffing Assessment diagnostic and participating in our unique IT Spend benchmarking, you will gain critical information to position your team to be seen as strategic.

Durable Goods Manufacturing IT Management & Governance Benchmarking Report

• Understanding your IT team’s perception of what’s important and how well they’re doing is central to identifying strengths, weaknesses, and potential misalignments with business priorities and expectations.
• Learn about how IT departments in your industry assess the importance and effectiveness of 45 IT processes to gauge your own alignment and identify select processes for targeted improvement.

Develop a Business Continuity Plan for Manufacturing

• Implement a structured and repeatable process that you apply to one business unit at a time to keep business continuity planning efforts manageable.
• Use the results of the pilot to identify gaps in your recovery plans and reduce overall continuity risk while continuing to assess specific risks as you repeat the process with additional business units.
• Enable business leaders to own the BCP going forward. Develop a template that the rest of the organization can use.
• Leverage BCP outcomes to refine IT DRP recovery objectives and achieve DRP-BCP alignment.

Real-Time Transportation Visibility (Logistic Visibility Systems)

• Predict problems and identify opportunities to streamline processes.
• Enable higher levels of customer satisfaction.
• See how processes can be streamlined to meet OTIF targets.

Harmonizing Complexity: Control Tower Integration

• Predict potential problems and identify corrective action.
• Enable higher levels of customer and employee satisfaction.
• See how effective the processes are in real-time.

Bring Your Factory to Life With Smart Manufacturing 5.0

• Predict any potential problems or roadblocks.
• Enable higher levels of collaboration and quality.
• See greater efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The Connected Factory

• Identify: The kinds of compliance, certifications, standards, and regulatory activities that are important for your business sector and products.
• Prioritize: Further determine which tools can be used for tracking and tracing information, for conducting internal audits, and for generating reports for governing bodies.
• Align: After establishing what technologies are needed for compliance you will form the team in accordance with initial setup and ongoing management of compliance across all suppliers as well as considerations for management of in-transit control processes such as customs and CTPAT.

Using Supply Chain Control Tower for Competitive Differentiation

A supply chain control tower allows organizations to:

• Predict problems across the supply chain.
• Enable real-time information and decision-making capabilities.
• See where goods are and any bottlenecks that may be occurring.

Deliver Operational Efficiency Through Predictive Maintenance

• Predict: problems based on tolerance.
• Enable: proactive actions (predictive instead of reactive maintenance).
• See: prevention of downtime, increased productivity, and higher customer satisfaction.

Autonomous Technologies in Manufacturing

The deployment of industrial robots in manufacturing can yield a wide range of impactful results, transforming various aspects of operations, productivity, and overall business success. Some potential results and impacts include:

• Enhanced Productivity: Industrial robots can perform tasks with high precision and consistency, leading to increased production speed and reduced cycle times. This heightened productivity can result in greater output and quicker order fulfillment.
• Improved Quality: Robots execute tasks with minimal variation, resulting in consistent product quality and reduced defects. This leads to improved customer satisfaction, reduced rework, and decreased waste.
• Optimized Resource Utilization: Robots can operate 24/7 without breaks, minimizing idle time and maximizing resource utilization. This efficiency leads to reduced energy consumption, optimized material usage, and improved overall resource management.
• Increased Flexibility: Modern robots are designed for versatility and easy reprogramming. Manufacturers can swiftly adapt to changes in production demands, allowing for rapid product line reconfiguration.
• Human-Robot Collaboration: Collaborative robots (cobots) can work safely alongside human operators, enhancing task efficiency and worker safety. This collaboration can lead to improved ergonomic conditions and reduced human fatigue.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Robotic automation generates vast amounts of data that can be analyzed to identify patterns, optimize processes, and make informed decisions for continuous improvement.
• Safety Improvement: Dangerous and hazardous tasks can be assigned to robots, reducing the risk of workplace accidents and injuries for human workers.
• Cost Reduction: While the initial investment in robotics can be substantial, the long-term cost savings from increased efficiency, reduced waste, and lower error rates can be significant.
• Competitive Advantage: Companies that embrace industrial robots can gain a competitive edge by offering higher-quality products, faster turnaround times, and improved customer responsiveness.
• Sustainability: Efficient resource utilization and waste reduction achieved through robotic automation can contribute to improved sustainability efforts, leading to reduced environmental impact.

Generative AI in Digital Twins

The deployment of Gen AI with digital twins can empower manufacturers with predictive insights and real-time solutions. Manufacturers can improve their operational efficiency, innovation capabilities, and overall competitiveness using cognitive twins. Gen AI also improves resilience, risk management, and sustainability when used in conjunction with digital twins.

• Enhanced Analytics: Predict future states of the system and identify potential issues or failures.
• Optimized Performance: Optimize system and process performance, resulting in improvements.
• Improved Decision-Making: Create new, innovative designs and solutions, resulting in novel products and services.
• Improved Resilience: Enhance supply chain visibility and predict potential disruptions.
• Sustainability and Waste Reduction: Reduce waste and energy consumption, leading to more sustainable operations.
• Rapid Changes: Enable digital twins to adapt in real-time to changes in the environment.
• Risk Management: Assess and simulate various risk scenarios, enabling proactive risk management.
• Improved Modeling: Create accurate simulations of complex systems to develop and test new concepts quickly.

Empower Your Manufacturing Organization With the Potential of Intelligent Automation

Intelligent automation adds significant value to organizations. Intelligent automation has a variety of real-world applications and can simplify processes, reduce resource use, and improve operational efficiencies.

• Extend and speed up innovation, automate R&D, and integrate products and services.
• Streamline supply chain operations and enable access to accurate information.
• Improve customer experience by automating sales, services, and marketing.
• Streamline core corporate processes across finance, sales, HR, and IT.

Digital Twins in Manufacturing

Embracing digital twin technology in the manufacturing industry offers a myriad of advantages, including:

• Enhanced Product Development: Digital twins enable rapid prototyping and virtual testing, reducing the time and costs associated with physical prototypes.
• Optimized Production Processes: Manufacturers can simulate different production scenarios to identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and improve overall efficiency.
• Predictive Maintenance: Digital twins facilitate predictive maintenance by analyzing real-time data, allowing businesses to address maintenance needs before equipment failure occurs.
• Reduced Downtime: With real-time monitoring and predictive capabilities, digital twins help minimize unplanned downtime, leading to increased productivity.
• Improved Quality and Safety: Manufacturers can ensure product quality and safety by identifying and rectifying issues in the virtual environment before they manifest in the physical world.
• Informed Decision Making: Data-driven insights from digital twins empower manufacturers to make well-informed decisions, driving continuous improvement.
• Remote Monitoring and Control: Digital twins enable remote monitoring and control of assets and processes, enabling efficient management across distributed locations.

Sustainable Autonomous Packaging Solutions

Failure to define and meet sustainability goals will mean:

• Significant reputational damage in addition to fines and legal action
• Inability to remain competitive in an evolving marketplace
• Being a less attractive option for customers actively looking for more sustainable solutions

Adopt Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency

• Distinguish blockchain from bitcoin by introducing a business-centric definition of blockchain around its unique and competitive technological features.
• Discover successful blockchain use cases in different industries; business leaders can leverage tangible real-life examples to interpret the impact of blockchain on their own industry.
• By analyzing the value chain of their business, CIOs can understand stakeholder pain points and craft a blockchain use case around them.

Advanced Inventory Management

Effective, technology-led inventory management can help address supply chain challenges. This research presents a playbook to deploy advanced technology and improve your inventory management maturity. Critical components of this playbook include an overview of inventory management systems and their advanced capabilities, an introduction to KPIs for effective performance management, and a technology maturity map to show you what good inventory management looks like. This will ultimately arm you with the ability to plan better, procure more efficiently, and fulfill in an optimized manner across more channels, customer types, and geographies.

Select a PLM Solution to Make Better Products

• Our methodology will address the issues presented using a vendor feature–set based approach to showing the client the art of the possible for PLM.
• Drawing on experience from nearly three dozen analyst engagements pertaining to PLM, half of which involved the manufacturing sector, our methodology enables the member to find a structured approach to vendor selection for this complex application category.
• Moreover, by utilizing Info-Tech’s vendor landscape and executive primer, the member and their business stakeholders can be confident they are taking the right approach to selecting a PLM solution.

Durable Goods Manufacturing IoT Platforms Report

• IoT technology is adding a new level of visibility, traceability, and utilization of goods and machines in the manufacturing process.
• By providing real-time utilization information, organizations can react quickly to address capacity issues, reduce machine downtime by anticipating failure before it happens, and improve the overall quality of the product.
• Gain insights into IoT technology and how CIOs are playing a larger role in its evolving implementation.

Durable Goods Manufacturing Autonomous Mobile Robots Report

• The introduction of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that can work independently around the clock, achieving a higher degree of quality, is forcing organizations to review and redesign many processes.
• Robots are working side by side with humans to help eliminate errors and improve product quality.
• Learn about AMRs and how they affect both your organization as a whole and IT specifically, including challenges and opportunities.

Durable Goods Manufacturing Additive Manufacturing Report

• Additive manufacturing technology, using 3D printing, allows simpler and faster model creation during the prototyping process and with IoT will redefine the supply chain process.
• 3D printing has the potential to revolutionize the industry by adding degrees of personalization and flexibility. Learn about this technology and how Durable Manufacturing CIOs are starting to play a key role in its implementation.